The last ten days have been hectic for those in the genetic engineering field. Synthetic life has been created, scream the headlines, and well, it is no hoax, at least not entirely.<\/p>\n
The man at the center of it all, Craig Venter, is no stranger to those in the field of biotech, having been associated earlier with mapping the human gene.<\/p>\n
Such a breathtaking announcement is not just of academic interest to us at Oilgae, because Venter has reportedly mentioned that the first real-world use to which he plans to try his synthetic life creation technique will be in \u2013 hold your breath \u2013 algae fuels.<\/p>\n
Exxon Mobil entered into a partnership with Craig Venter\u2019s Synthetic Genomics (SGI) in mid 2009 in order to explore applying SGI expertise in genetic engineering to create algae that can produce biofuels on a large scale, in an economically sustainable manner.<\/p>\n
While ExxonMobil brings in the engineering expertise and tons of money, SGI brings in the genetic engineering knowledge. Exxon Mobil had committed to invest over $600 million in this effort to make sustainable algae fuels a reality.<\/p>\n
Now you can well understand why all of us here at algae have been burning our midnight oil last one week over Craig Venter\u2019s work. Well, we have been following Craig Venter since the time Exxon Mobil invested in his company, but his recent achievement added an extra level of importance to his work for all of us at Oilgae.<\/p>\n
I hence thought that I\u2019d dedicate this issue of the newsletter to providing inputs and perspectives on Craig Venter\u2019s work and how it could influence algae fuel research.<\/p>\n
The following are the sections in this detailed article:<\/p>\n
John Craig Venter is an American biologist and entrepreneur, most well-known until recently for his role in being the (joint) first to sequence the human genome. Two weeks back, he became equally famous for booting up the first living cell with a synthetic genome.<\/p>\n
Venter has been a founder of companies\/organizations such as Celera Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research, the J. Craig Venter Institute and Synthetic Genomics. He was listed on Time magazine’s 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.<\/p>\n
His work on human genome<\/em><\/p>\n Craig Venter isn’t exactly your idea of a normal human being. Far from it. While working on the project to map the human genome, Craig Venter believed that the maverick approach of shotgun sequencing (rather than a classical long-winded approach) was the fastest and most effective way to get useful human genome data. The method was controversial since some geneticists felt it would not be accurate enough for a genome as complicated as the human.<\/p>\n With funding from the private sector, Venter founded Celera Genomics, whose goal was to sequence the entire human genome and release it into the public domain for non-commercial use in much less time and for much less cost than the public human genome project. DNA from five demographically different individuals was used by Celera to generate the sequence of the human genome, one of them being Venter himself!<\/p>\n In 2000, Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Public Genome Project jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome. Despite some claims that shotgun sequencing was in some ways less accurate than the clone-by-clone method chosen by the Human Genome Project, the technique became widely accepted by the scientific community and is still used today.<\/p>\n After the human genome project, Venter founded – and is the president of – the J. Craig Venter Institute, which conducts research in synthetic biology. In June 2005, he co-founded Synthetic Genomics, a firm dedicated to using modified microorganisms to produce clean fuels and biochemicals.<\/p>\n The first synthetic life form<\/em><\/p>\n In May 2010, a team of scientists led by Venter became the first to successfully create what was described as “synthetic life”.<\/p>\n Craig Venter and his team had succeeded in building the genome of a bacterium from scratch and had incorporated it into a cell to make what they called the world’s “first synthetic life form.”<\/p>\n How exactly did they do this?<\/p>\n In a decade-long work, Venter and his researchers first mapped the genome of a simple bacteria, Mycoplasma mycoides. A genome is the ‘brain’ and control center of a cell, and contains sequences of DNA which carry all the genetic information needed for the cell \u2014 and by extension, the organism \u2014 to function. Genomes, like all other living matter, are made of chemical compounds.<\/p>\n Once the genome was mapped, Venter\u2019s team manufactured the M. mycoides’ genome in the lab, using chemicals. This synthetic genome was identical to the ‘original’ except for certain harmless ‘signatures’ the team put in to identify it as synthetic. The synthetic genome was then inserted into another type of bacteria after the bacteria’s own genome had been taken out.<\/p>\n Voila! As soon as the synthetic genome was inserted into the genomeless cell, it started making new proteins encoded in its DNA and converted it into a new synthetic species. That is, the cell was able to understand the synthetic genome and started “working with it”. According to Craig Venter, the cell has replicated over a billion times, and the only DNA that the cell has now is the synthetic one that Venter\u2019s team made. Exciting stuff!<\/p>\n